1 year after sinkhole death, Unity residents live in fear of mine subsidence

One year after a deadly sinkhole swallowed a woman searching for her cat near Marguerite Road, fear remains palpable for residents in a small Unity neighborhood. They worry abandoned coal mines beneath their homes could collapse at any time.

That anxiety is real on Libby Lane, a few hundred feet from the site where, last December, 64-year-old Elizabeth Pollard of Unity fell to her death behind Monday’s Union Restaurant. The sinkhole where she fell opened above an area where authorities said multiple mining tunnels converged.

“I’m a little afraid of going out to the mailbox, that I don’t walk out and fall into a 30-foot sinkhole,” said Mark Koloshinsky, 68, who lives across the street from the restaurant in a converted duplex originally built for mine workers.

His cousin and neighbor, Cheryl Koloshinsky, knows all about the mine beneath the neighborhood.

“My father and grandfather both worked in that mine, and it goes under the whole area,” said Koloshinsky, 66, who lives across Marguerite Road from the restaurant.

State environmental officials remediated the caved-in area below Monday’s Union and have done small-scale fixes in the area. But some residents still are waiting their turn on a list for test drilling to determine what exactly is below their homes.

Pollard was searching for her cat behind the restaurant the night of Dec. 2, 2024, when she fell through what emergency officials said was perhaps a few inches of grass and dirt, hitting a large cone of collapsed earth and then rolling into one of the mining tunnels.

After nearly four days of excavation and searching, Pollard’s body was found about 12 feet southwest of the sinkhole where she fell underground, authorities said. Pollard was a retiree who previously worked at Walmart in Greensburg and Unity and the former Toys R Us in Hempfield.

An initially surgical approach to searching for Pollard turned to a “heavy dig” two days later. Emergency officials said conditions quickly became too dangerous to send search-and-rescue personnel into the former Marguerite coal mine, where the converging tunnels likely contributed to the sinkhole’s formation.

Related:

• Monday’s reopens after sinkhole incident
• Unity woman died of head, torso injuries
• Abandoned mines pose concerns

A year later

On the morning of Black Friday, the parking lot at Monday’s Union was quiet, as the restaurant doesn’t open until the late afternoon. A one-story garage behind the restaurant, which was just a few feet from the sinkhole’s opening, is gone.

At the time of the incident, Trooper Steve Limani handled the heart-wrenching task of communicating progress on the search for Pollard to media and the public, while building relationships with her family and the staff at Monday’s. The experience has stuck with him for the past year, quickly becoming the most memorable of his career.

“I’ve stayed in touch with Monday’s,” he said, visiting twice a month or so to see how the staff and owners are doing. “You almost become friends when you’re in some type of catastrophic emergency.”

It’s important to him to continue to support them by picking up a stromboli every once in awhile, or even just stopping to chat.

“That little patch of homes and the people in that community have grown near and dear to my heart,” he said. “I think about them all the time.”

Marguerite sprung to life in the late 1800s, when the Standard Connellsville Coke Co. developed a coal mine and coke works nearby and built houses for its employees. Today, it is an unincorporated neighborhood of about 150 homes.

Cheryl Koloshinsky said there are areas of her property across the street where she can see what appears to be the effect of mine subsidence.

“There are areas of the ground that have sunken down a noticeable amount, four or five inches,” she said. “In some places where I used to have no problem running the mower, now the wheels will sink into the ground.”

Three years ago, Koloshinsky’s house sustained more than $35,000 in damage from flooding that also hit Latrobe’s Dorothy neighborhood.

Comparing the threat of subsidence to the recent flooding, she said she isn’t sure what is affecting her property more.

“If you drive Marguerite Road, it’s easy to see that it’s caving in places,” she said. “Is it because of the mining? The flooding? The contour of the land? I don’t know. But when you’re walking around, you just have to be careful. I’m in double jeopardy now, it seems like. I’ve got ground I’m worried about walking on, and I’m worried about more flooding.”

Remediation efforts

A little more than a week after Pollard’s body was found, DEP officials contracted with Ligonier Construction crews to dig between 12 and 16 bore holes across the restaurant property, with several strategically placed along the borders of the restaurant itself. Each was pumped with a cement-like grout mixture that slowly spread out over a roughly 25-foot area as it hardened, forming wide pillars to support the earth — and the restaurant — above.

The cost of that work was estimated to be about $1 million, according to Unity Supervisor Mike O’Barto.

“Unfortunately, the amount of money it would take to fix the entire area would probably be over a billion dollars,” O’Barto said. “It’s a concern for residents in that area. There were quite a few people who, afterward, were looking into mine subsidence insurance if they didn’t already have it. For the whole last year, if someone nearby saw a sinkhole in their yard, they’d panic and call the state or their insurance company.

“That fear has not gone away at all,” he said.

Mark Koloshinsky said he’s seen no warning signs of a sinkhole forming on his property and was told archival maps indicate that underground mining stopped short of his lot. But he is concerned the map might not reflect the actual work that occurred in the mine, especially since a sinkhole was discovered on a neighbor’s property during the summer.

He said he talked to a DEP representative in January and was told his lot would be placed on a list of properties designated for follow-up testing.

“They’re supposed to come and test our yard for any kind of mine subsidence,” he said. “They have to bring in all kind of machinery and drill holes. They said it’s a big list, and we’re on it.”

But he said he’s not holding his breath.

“We’re just going to hang in there. I hope we can hold out until they test to be sure,” he said.

DEP officials said its Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation, which performed an investigation following the incident, concluded that the sinkhole was caused by a collapse of “overburden” — the term for rock or soil overlying a mineral deposit — above the mine. That is consistent with rescuers’ description of a large cone-shaped formation of earth and rock directly beneath the sinkhole’s opening.

The voids under the restaurant property were filled with large grout pillars. DEP spokesperson Laina Aquiline said, however, that the bureau does not perform follow-up inspections.

“It’s the landowner’s responsibility to contact DEP if additional subsidence occurs,” she said.

In the past year, the bureau’s Cambria office has filled in more than 80 other holes caused by subsidence. They include projects in East Huntingdon, Hempfield, Penn Township and Rostraver in Westmoreland County, and Heidelberg and West Mifflin in Allegheny County.

A sizable project to stabilize subsidence-affected areas of Belle Vernon kicked off in mid-July, with a completion date of December 2027. There are more than 220 homes within the project’s work area.

Uncertain future

Koloshinsky expressed sympathy for those who were directly affected by the sinkhole incident behind the restaurant, and he’s hoping nothing like it happens again in his community.

“It was a terrible outcome from it all,” he said. “I hope they got it fixed.”

Dale Hutchinson lives several doors away, farther north along Marguerite Road. He said a sinkhole on his property that was 9 feet deep was filled in last spring as part of a state-coordinated effort in the neighborhood.

Hutchinson has seen maps showing underground mining occurred beneath his property, but he wasn’t aware of that when he moved there in 2008 and built his home.

Initially, he thought the hole in his yard was the work of a local groundhog. But, he said, “I kept trying to fill it up and it would fall down through.”

In the aftermath of the fatal sinkhole fall, he contacted state officials to have the hole in his yard addressed.

“They looked at it and measured it and checked the rest of my yard,” Hutchinson said.

After he signed related documents, he said, “They came with a load of stone and six or seven guys.”

Using machinery, the crew repeatedly dumped stone into the hole and tamped it down.

“They filled it and tamped it until it was solid,” he said. “It didn’t take them long, a few hours. How long it’s going to stay there, I don’t know.

“They did another one up the street the same day.”

Hutchinson said he obtained mine subsidence insurance as a precaution and was told a state crew could return to drill multiple holes and pump in a different type of fill material if he experiences additional problems.

Grass has grown up to cover Hutchinson’s former sinkhole, and he said the fill has been solid enough to deter further digging attempts by the groundhog.

Despite the fix, Hutchinson is not taking any chances.

“I don’t even cut grass over it anymore,” he said.